A TYPICAL ENGLISH SAILOR.

Northland Age, Volume VIII, Issue 25, 9 February 1912, Page 2

A TYPICAL ENGLISH SAILOR.

CAPTAIN LANCASTER, OF THE DRAGON. Down in 1834 the East India Company had in its employ a body of officers and seamen who formed a force half way between a merchant fleet and a navy. They "went out desirous to trade, but prepared to fight for freedom to trade.” For more than two hundred years they played a great part not only in building up the vast fabric of the Company’s tia~e, but "i?*. in making India British.

The very first voyage showed of what stuff these men were made. In 1603 two ships, the Dragon and the Hector, met with storms in the South Atlantic on their homeward voyage. The rudder of the Dragon got unshipped, and the sea was too high to allow of its being rehung. Some of her crew would have left hep to drift and made their way home in the Hector. But Captain Lancaster,, who commanded the Dragon, would neither abandon his ship nor risk inflicting loss on his employers by keeping his consort in company. The Hector was sent home bearing this letter to the Company—"l will well strive with all diligence to save my ship and her gbods, as you may perceive by the course I take ii\ venturing mine owne life, .and those that are with mee. t cannot tell where you should looke for me, if you send out any pinnace to seeke me, because I live at, the devotion of the winds and seas.” It is pleasant to-know that in the end all wont well. The storm abated, the rudder was rehungi, and Captain Lancaster lived to reach home, to be knighted, and to become a director of the East India Company.—" Spectator.”